Flipkart’s co-founder Sachin Bansal invests Rs 150 crore in Ola

Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has pumped in about Rs 150 crore in ride-hailing platform Ola, according to documents filed with the Corporate Affairs Ministry.

“… 70,588 fully and compulsorily convertible, cumulative ‘Series J’ Preference Shares’ having face value of Rs 10 having the rights, privileges and preferences… is hereby allotted at a subscription price of Rs 21,250,” the documents showed.

This translates into an investment of about Rs 150 crore by Bansal, who left Flipkart after the US retail giant Walmart picked up 77 per cent stake in the e-commerce company for USD 16 billion.

The resolution was passed at a board meeting of ANI Technologies, the entity that runs Ola, on January 12, according to the documents.

E-mails sent to Ola and Bansal did not elicit any response.

According to sources, Bansal is pumping in Rs 650 crore in total and the Rs 150 crore funding is part of the total investment.

The allotment of these shares to Bansal is part of Ola’s plans to raise about USD 1 billion in funding, they added.

In October last year, the Bengaluru-based company had announced raising USD 1.1 billion funding from China’s Tencent Holdings and SoftBank Group. It had also stated that it was in “advanced talks” to close an additional USD 1 billion funding to take total mop-up to more than USD 2 billion.

Ola is locked in a battle for market leadership with US-based rival Uber in India and other markets like Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The Indian company has been aggressively ramping up its rides business as well as hailing platform and food delivery operations (through Foodpanda).